It is not difficult to assess the impact of the unfolding shambles and fiasco that is David Davis and all his works, or lack of them. He could have been one of the great campaigning backbenchers. But he should never have been a Minister. Meanwhile, Boris Johnson is writing articles for The Sun attacking online campaigns against The Sun, because, as the Foreign Secretary with responsibility neither for Brexit nor for International Trade, he has nothing else to do.
Nor is it difficult to assess the impact on the electorate of the realisation that the Prime Minister can now be called to heel like a dog, and publicly humiliated on the international stage, by the DUP. That party ought to stand candidates anywhere, and I do mean anywhere at all, in England, Scotland or Wales, purely in order to see the results.
Are most of the DUP's voters even in favour of Brexit, an issue that has little or nothing to do with how people vote in parliamentary elections? Just as the majority opinion in Scotland is to remain both in the United Kingdom and in the European Union, yet the only party of that mind has all of four seats out of 59, so the majority opinion in Northern Ireland is the same, yet is represented by precisely one out of 18 MPs, and Sylvia Hermon is an Independent.
For two years now, we have been told that the country was crying out for a pro-EU party of the liberal "centre". This year, such a party contested every seat in Great Britain. It won 12 out of 650 seats, with 7.4 per cent of the vote.
For far longer, we have been told that the country was crying out for a populist party to the right of the Conservatives. This year, such a party contested every seat in Great Britain. It won none of the 650 seats, not even the one that it had already held following the defection of the Conservative incumbent, and it took a whopping 1.8 per cent of the vote. Its 594,068 votes in the entire country were not even three times the attendance at the Durham Miners' Gala a few weeks later.
UKIP's was a populism without that most vital of ingredients, popularity. Meanwhile, the Conservatives toyed with bringing back grammar schools and foxhunting, and they duly lost their overall majority. That toying was the impact, and that loss was the assessment.
For far longer, we have been told that the country was crying out for a populist party to the right of the Conservatives. This year, such a party contested every seat in Great Britain. It won none of the 650 seats, not even the one that it had already held following the defection of the Conservative incumbent, and it took a whopping 1.8 per cent of the vote. Its 594,068 votes in the entire country were not even three times the attendance at the Durham Miners' Gala a few weeks later.
UKIP's was a populism without that most vital of ingredients, popularity. Meanwhile, the Conservatives toyed with bringing back grammar schools and foxhunting, and they duly lost their overall majority. That toying was the impact, and that loss was the assessment.
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